


We Must Be Killers

by Teawithmagician



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Breaking Up & Making Up, Crazy Shane, Explicit Language, F/M, Flashbacks, Het, POV Female Character, Past Relationship(s), Rough Kissing, Undecided Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-05-29 05:17:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6360997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teawithmagician/pseuds/Teawithmagician
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It's me,” he put his hand on the trunk and I knew I had lost the battle. Even if I pulled the trigger there was a chance Shane would shove the trunk away and the shot go idle, attracting the attention of the walkers, drooling in the distance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We must be killers,  
> Children of the Wild Ones.  
> Killers.  
> Where we got left to run?
> 
> \- We Must Be Killers, Mikky Ekko.
> 
> Yes, I am absolutely immoral for pairing OFC with canon character.

The feeling of presence was so strong I woke up with a jerk that nearly made me fall off the branches I was lying at. That must have been a walker, but there were no walkers around me. Every tree, every shade seemed a threat, still it was just the forest – and nothing else. Peaceful. Familiar. Nice...

Nice? No – no way it's nice. No way it's peaceful. No way it's familiar. I was a police officer, not a girl scout, and I wanted to go back to Atlanta – if there would be a city to go back to. 

What the fuck I was thinking about? I was in the forest away from the farm, my limbs so numb I needed a microwave to get them going. The air warmed up slowly, still I had to breathe on my hands to make my fingers move again. When I felt my hands and feet good enough, I got off from the tree slowly, swinging on the branch before I was ready to jump off.

Something cracked. That would be my feet landing on the sticks covered by the dry leaves as well as some walker plodding for the freshly-baked Creole breakfast served outdoors. I acted before thinking, as I was taught: luckily, I didn't shoot before looking, as my gun was pointed at what appeared to be Shane's face.

I wanted to pull the trigger. I wanted it so much my fingers were shaky, but I knew I couldn't, and not because of him – because of the Two Cops. There were always a Good Cop and a Bad Cop. At Rick's side, I was bad. Along with Shane, I was more or less like an angel.

“Easier, baby, that's me,” Shane licked his lips. I hated him for doing that. He always licked his lips when he was nervous. Or before kissing, too. I never minded his kisses taste with bacon and coffee, but it was in the times the world didn't go to hell in a waste-basket.

“Put that gun down,” Shane demanded. “You don't want to shoot me, do you?”

“How do you know?” I snapped the gun up with my both hands. Shane was always good at melee, and I wasn't going to give him a chance to jump on me and take away my gun from the convenient position I offered. “Now take the gun off your belt – gentler – and throw it here, where I can see it. Understand?” 

“Okay, I've messed the things up,” Shane said, looking at me. He did everything I said, including unhooking the pistol from his hip and throwing it into the pile of dry leaves. Right after the gun disappeared in rustling, hitting the ground underneath the pile, Shane moved his legs gently, one before another, forming the basic attacking stance. 

I looked at his feet first, only then at his arms, and shook the trunk. “No, baby, just don't. I know your moves, you can't trick me twice.”

“I ain't tricking you,” he said with his eyes wide open, innocent like a child. 

“You're lying so confident I would never play poker with you. And yes, you've messed the things up.”

“Aren't you supposed to be a supportive listener? I was looking for you whole night long.”

I quickly checked Shane's face. I doubted his words, but he looked really bad, like a night patrolman in the city where coffee was forbidden, but the sedatives were given with the badge and the handgun in the Department. Maybe it was because his shaved his head, it made Shane ugly in the worst pitbull manner.

“Aren't you supposed not to be a psychotic sociopath?”

“I did what I must to protect you. All of you. Rick never had the guts to do it,” Shane said harshly. He was too quick to answer, as though the answer was ready days ago, and just waited for me to come for the explanations in the storehouse of his memory.

“Rick has the guts to be somebody you can't.”

“The guts he has are only good for the walkers. I know what I have to do and I do it right.” 

I had a feeling I heard that before. Shane's talk was well-paced, he knew when to be tough, and when to be gentle. He chose to be tough to make me swallow his lies, but I was done with them. The only good thing about it was if Shane chose to lie, he tried to mix me up – you wouldn't be mixing up with your victim. Or would you?

“You've said you've messed the things up. How can you be right?”

“You can't survive this just being nice. I did what it took to protect.”

“Lori?”

“Everyone.”

Shane tried to grab my gun, but I dodged the sucker punch and hit his hand with the butt of the gun. Lori's name made me loose control. I clenched my teeth, promising myself that would never happen again, and commanded Shane to raise his hands up.

“It were you who killed Otis.”

“Technically, I didn't,” Shane raised his hands slowly, clenching the fingers behind his nape. The veins on his arms were bulging under the skin like the blue snakes. The hit of the morning warming up quickly made Shane sweat, there were dark spots in his armpits and semicircle of salt on his chest. I felt the skin over my upper lip becoming moist, too, and hardly kept from licking it up. 

“You left him for dead. It's the same thing.”

“He would die one way or another,” Shane shrugged his shoulders, his chin up. I saw the sore red dots on his skin, his neck was shaved sloppily, bristle darkening the jaw and the cheeks. “He was not a survivor type. His body held the walkers back and got us what we needed.”

“You don't see the difference, do you?”

I wanted to ask him another question. It was like “Shane, you were a cop just like me and Rick, you were supposed to save people – and you did it, you saved them. What had happened that you started to kill people instead?” 

I didn't have the guts... Well, no – I had the guts to ask. I didn't have them to hear the answer.

“Everything I ever did, I did for the group,” Shane insisted. He was so stubborn I wanted to hit him on the head. The way he looked, as though it was him pointed the gun at me, not me – at him, drove me nuts. He was either not afraid or wasn't showing me the fear. If I killed him, or he killed me, there wouldn't be much difference.

“Don't lie to me. I know you are lying, so just don't.” I hated Shane playing tricks on me even more than cheating on me. I would break his nose once again just to make him tell the truth, but since we had arrived, he was always lying.

“I'm not lying, neither should you. Do you still love me?” his question had the effect of the exploded bomb. I looked at Shane, hardly understanding what was going on. The weird expression on Shane's face helped me go no further. It was like he understood what he was talking about no better than me.

“No,” I responded in a blink of an eye. That wasn't what I was going to say, but at least, it was the answer rude enough to hold Shane's back. Unfortunately, I forgot about how unholdable he was. 

“Now you are lying,” Shane's mouth stretched and jerked. He was wearing the same old green shirt I saw him yesterday, and a day before yesterday. It was dirty and smelled with sweat, so strong it beat the scents of the forest. 

“That doesn't matter if I lie or not,” I said angrily, swallowing the bait. 

We never had anything to share but the evenings and the nights, bars and hangovers. I never wanted anything from him but pressing me into the pillows, his body hot and hard, and whispering into my ears he was going to fuck the life out of me.

Even if he said he loved me, even if he really did – it was just a pillow-talk. I was a big girl, I knew what the pillow-talk was. I and Shane, we were not Lori and Rick: there was no happily ever after. Maybe Shane knew it too, and when he thought me dead, he switched to Lori so easily? 

“You call me ruthless, you call me cunning. You say I'm insane and you say I'm a threat. Would you love a man like me?” Shane continued to poke about it. He took a step closer, and I was so self-absorbent I didn't even noticed that. He took a step, and a step more, so I spoke out before he came too close, “I loved a man who was stupid enough to eat donuts on duty. That walking cliché I loved. The man I see now I don't really know.”

“Do you want to know him?” Shane asked, tilting his head when the truck abutted into his chest. He looked at the truck like at some sort of strange insect or maybe a cockroach you found in the kitchen of your brand new clean flat, with the mix of the interest and surprise. 

“I want bourbon,” I said wearily. I really needed a lot of bourbons, rivers of it streaming down the hills. All the bourbon in the world wouldn't make me feel better after all I had seen and done, but at least with bourbon, it was worth trying.

“I'm not a monster. I'm still the man you used to know,” Shane said. He said it just like Shane I used to patrol the streets with. But I didn't let his voice trick me. No, I didn't let him trick me again, no, sir.

“Why don't you get lost in the woods or get eaten by some corpses?”

“It's me,” he put his hand on the trunk and I knew I had lost the battle. Even if I pulled the trigger there was a chance Shane would shove the trunk away and the shot go idle, attracting the attention of the walkers, drooling in the distance.

“I'm not sure,” the barrel sank into Shane's chest. A blink of gold on his neck, the necklace – he was still wearing it, a strange habit for the man who claimed the survival of the fittest as his motto. His hands took hold of the gun, but it was unimportant – I wouldn't shoot him looking him into the eyes. 

“Why the fuck you think you do? You don't even know me. We dated for two months, you don't fucking know me,” Shane said. This is it, the trunk pressed to his chest so hard I would hear his heartbeat pulsing in my fingers. 

“Maybe I don't. Maybe I've never really known you. Maybe I never really loved you,” I threw into his face, but he didn't care for what I was saying. He grabbed my hands and pulled my gun. I would fight him, but I listened to the words he said instead, because – yes, I loved him still.

“I know what to do, but I need your help. I need you, I fucking need you,” he said, and I just burst out with bitter words I caressed for so long, “No you don't. You want to be the king of the hill at any price.”

“Even a king of the hill needs a queen,” Shane said, but this time, it was me who wasn't listening – as I was unbuckling the belt of his pants. Shane habitually pulled the collar of my shirt, digging his mouth into my neck, and his fingers into my butt.

I waited for him to find the markings on my shoulder, and he found them. While breathing into my neck huffily, Shane pulled the collar down once more, and the fabric crackled, showing him the scars. “The fuck is this,” he gasped. I understood his surprise, what he saw was terrible. 

The look was enough for him to lose control. He couldn't manage to block my knee hammering in between his legs, he didn't even waited for that, and when he fell, I couldn't avoid the pleasure kicking his in the ribs, too. 

“This fuck is,” I said, breathing heavily, “the walker that bit me.”


	2. Chapter 2

Shane opened the door and sat on the driver's seat, so I took the “steersman's”. It was senseless to ask who was driving, so I opened the door and got into. The car was dirty, but the seats were soft and comfortable. It used to be a big car for a big family.

I saw Rick in the side view mirror, he stood in the grass his waist high, looking at us leaving, sulky and slouching, in his weirdo's hat, making no sense in the world without government and, soon, without people.

How did it feel to doubt your child is not your child? I didn't want to know. The terrible mess grew like fungus in the bathroom with the time being. What started Shane and Lori, was going to take blood.

We could drive in the silence forever. I listened to Shane's breath, heard him swallowing. The fly locked in the car was making loops and circles before the rearview mirror. There were sunburnt fields on the left, and sunburnt fields on the right, sometimes trees and cows, who were rotting as they stood.

The car raised dust as the passed, it must have been looking like a desert storm, a plume of yellow dust on the road covered with cracks and hollows, broken by the wheels of military trucks, too heavy for the county asphalt to bear.

“Do you realize that Lori doesn't love you?” I was the first to break the silence. “She doesn't even need you. Rick is back, he is her husband, What are you counting on – she'll see how handsome and awesome you are and changes her mind?”

“It's none of your business,” Shane lowered his arm and switched the gear.

The speed pressed me into my seat. The vein on Shane's head looked more like a rope than a worm , so tensed I felt like I could hear it's ringing. The flesh yielding the fury. Shane wanted to hit me with his elbow, he was just in such a position, but I had the gun and the knife though I wouldn't take the gun.

A knife in the hip is a questionable pleasure, too. And Shane had one old-fashioned habit – he thought a man wasn't supposed to hit a woman.

“I didn't fuck with Rick just because I felt lonely,” I continued. Maybe, I shouldn't say it, but the words ached in me and I couldn't hold them down. People died, and I was most concerned with the fact my ex-boyfriend fucked my friend's pregnant wife – or fucked her and made her pregnant.

“You don't know what I feel,” the car stopped dead. If not the safety belt, I would leave my teeth under the glass alongside with dead flies and bunch of the dying bugs. Shane didn't use his belt, but he has the wheel to hold on to. Getting out of the car, he looked at me, adding, “And I don't know who were fucking you.”

“Zombies mostly,” I responded coldly. When I had been out of the car, the work began. It was just like patrolling, excepting unruly citizens, their spoiled children and golden-aged kamikaze drivers.

Closing the door, I breathed, and made the mandatory security anti-walker visual check – at least, that's how I called it. There was calm in the town in the days, in the night – nobody would dare to take a ride here after the sunset. Not like walkers like vampires became stronger in the night, but in the night, you saw less and were more vulnerable.

The broken glass crunched under my feet when I slowly approached to the pharmacy's door. Shane opened it, nodding me to come in, shotgun in his hands. He would be on the lookout, then. A man I fought in the forest. My ex-lover and a possible enemy. Rick had the point telling me maybe it'd be better if somebody else would go with Shane, somebody else who was not me.

I said no. I said – no, I can carry it. I'm a patrolwoman. If Lori needed that medicine, you must send cops to get it. That could be dangerous, and, whispering in my small tongue, I would have a chance to speak to Shane because I still wanted to know what happened to him, to the man I... remembered.

“Quick, accurate, quiet,” Shane told me. I nodded, taking the gun out. It was not necessary, but I felt uneasy without it, I felt naked.

The packaging of drugs was lying underneath my feet, birth controls, antibiotics, vitamin complexes, half-empty, taken out of the blisters. Posters on the walls suggested that a woman of my age should take care of her nails and skin, and the women of the age of my mother should concern about thick pads in case of, your know, leaks.

The town behind the windows was empty like a ghost. A skeleton of the town, dead like a whale on the coast, his flesh eaten by the seagulls, his bones sinking deep into the sand. The windows were mostly broken, the demolition of the road coverings was flamboyant. How much time would it take to turn the whole city into the dust?

I found the shelf I was searching for at the end of the room. Shane followed me slowly, keeping the distance, the shotgun on his shoulder. If not the broken racks and smashed pills, dried blood on the walls and the strong feeling of abandonment, he acted just like always: confidently and correctly.

I could imagine me kissing him in the nape, him smiling and telling I should wait, his hands in my pockets because waiting was for everyone but him.

“They are are expired,” I said after examining the piles of pills. One month expired, two months expired, the whole party seemed to be expiring right before the end of the world.

“Look better,” Shane demanded, and I snapped at him, my arm between the shelves, “If it is your woman and your child, you look better.”

“Why can't you just shut up,” Shane snarled, his face reddening quickly. He got round the shelf, and behind his shoulder, I saw the movement, divided from us by pharmacy's muddy glass only. And then, I made a mistake – I shot.

I shot on instinct because my nerves were on the limit. I shot that drooling bastard, his lower jaw missing and his frontal teeth broken. What could he do to us – lick us to dead? He was more or less harmless. But to the sound of the shot, came the others, and they were no harmless at all.

The wave swept all other the city, raising up everyone who was able to walk, but the ones who ran – they ran. We flew out the pharmacy's, Shane running before me and I treading on his heels. In the same moment, the walkers appeared, the column moving from the corner of the street.

The stench floated before them, I felt I was choking. The cloud of decay and rot the walker brought, the moans turning into the roar they made then seeing us, it made me jerk forward. I didn't look down, on the broken road. I didn't see the hollow my feet got in, making that familiar cracking noise.

I fell down and I screamed. Shane turned back, he was closer to the car than to me. I tried to get up, but I moved like a smashed beetle: it was the ankle, my goddamn ankle was pulled and I couldn't get to the car by myself. Shane understood that when he pointed the shotgun at me. Maybe there was the slightest regret on his face, or maybe it wasn't.

I covered my face with my arms and frowned. Being shot at that distance, my head would burst with blood, bones and brain on meters and meters, yet it still was better than being eaten alive. I wasn't ready to die but in these seconds I... I submitted. Dying as senseless as living, that somehow made sense.

Shane grabbed my shoulders. He wanted to drag me first, but at some point, he just took me up and threw me into the car. When the car took off, I hit my head on the panel, feeling blood in my mouth. Shane took such a sharp turn I was thrown on the door, my fingers searching for the safety belt.

I didn't need the belt: Shane drove out the city, moving down the town road, back to the farm, fields and trees smudging into the yellow-green blur. He stopped as suddenly and violently, as he started the drive, if I didn't throw a hand forward, I'd have my face smashed on the panel.

Shane jumped out the car, run around it and opened my door. The pistol stuck in the holster, so when he took hold of my shoulder, I was unarmed. I wasn't ready for a fight, but if Shane punched me, I would fight. Instead of punching, he asked, “Are you fucking mad? Because of you, Lori won't get her pills. Because of you, zombies will be waiting before the pharmacy for fucking eternity!”

“I'm sorry,” losing the pharmacy was the problem. The moment I realized it I felt cold inside. No antibiotics, no painkillers, no bandages and antiseptics – nothing. We would need to get rid of the walkers, or to find a new medical point. Both choices were hard to make and harder to perform.

“You are the loss of time,” Shane loomed over me, veins on his neck pulsing. “You got bitten. You'll die.”

“I was bitten weeks ago. And I am still alive.”

“You are a problem,”

“No, I'm your carte blanche,” I hissed in Shane's face. Between me sitting in the car of a violent psycho and me embracing her funny hot boyfriend at County Police picnic was an abyss in the size of eternity. What did I have left to lose? “Saving me would mean you are not a monster.”

“Nobody thinks me a monster,” Shane entrenched on me. He looked exactly like a man who could kill you for looking at his dog in a manner he finds inappropriate. Without the curls, his nose seemed bigger and in the form of an eggplant, his ears sticking up funny.

“Did you ask them? Do you think they told you the truth if you did? You are a monster, Shane, a boogeyman for everyone in the group,” Shane ears were funny, but he wasn't and the situation wasn't. I didn't even understand why am I talking to him, he didn't give a damn for my words, he had another woman, and I... I couldn't believe it was for real.

“I am their leader,” Shane said wildly. His anger and despair were heated so fiercely one could put a kettle on it and expect the water to boil for one-two minutes. If his anger could come out with fire, my eyebrows and eyelashes were burnt to the root.

He always was most handsome when angry, and sometimes I bullied him just for fun. The problem was Shane I knew wasn't that easy to bully.

“You are their monster,” I said bitterly. I still wanted to kiss him but I wasn't sure he would let me do it for the second time.

I knew Shane wanted to throw me out of the car. Throw me out and leave me on the road. With my sore ankle, I wouldn't get to the farm before sunset and could only hope I meet as many walkers as I had bullets. He wanted to do it. But he returned to the car instead and started the engine.


	3. Chapter 3

It was an early morning. I woke up to the alarm call, still feeling sleepy. There was some trash on the nightstand, and Shane ignoring the blanket. The window was open and the curtains wavered in the street again.

"Hi, piglet," Shane said, yawning.

"Hi, ugly," I responded, realizing I had taken his blanket, too.

Mom called at five a.m., hour before the alarm. The call was left on the record, the message warning me it was her. I deleted the message and the record, I didn't want to know if she was dying again. She died twice a week, expecting me to come and to hold her hand while she was sighing dramatically.

No, mom, not today. Firstly, I cried a lot, ignoring her calls, but I feel better now except the emptiness in the place of family photos. I had no family, that was true. I only had a mother to care about, but caring about in my way, not hers.

I was on the shift with Rick. That was going to be easy, Rick was easy to work with. He was a nice man, and he always paid for both the coffees – a thing patrolman never forgot. Technically, we were not the patrolmen, we were deputies, but a police dog was hard to learn the new tricks. I started as a patrolwoman, a sheriff's deputy was just another name for it.

"How's your ankle?" Rick asked. He saw me walking from the quarters to the car and must have been noticed something. "It's doing well," I lied.

I had broken my ankle in Atlanta. I was a promising cop, and I remained so even after the incident. I was free to stay, but I asked for transference to my grandma's hometown. So I had not only the broken ankle that loved to be pulled and ache when rainy, but the house of my grandma to live in.

The clouds were sheeplike, it smelled with acacia and fat from the eatery at the corner of the street. I wanted to turn the radio on, but there was a rumor there would be checks in the Department, so we had to do it boring.

My therapist said I got rid of the panic attacks and I would be able to live a normal life pretty soon. It was two years ago. I didn't believe her much though I didn't have anxiety problems for all the time I worked at the King's County. It was a progress.

"Let's make a ride," Rick said, taking a look at his watch. It was just the time to start the morning circuit. I knew Rick had better things to do, he had a wife and a son. He would like to stay with them instead, but even if he did, he never showed.

I respected him as a cop for not asking for more convenient shifts and doing his job no matter the price. As his wife, I would hate him for this.

"We are good at pretending we are working," I said, putting my elbow into the window. Sheriff's deputies here were, on the one hand, more respectful towards the job they did, and on the other, less self-collected. 

Atlanta's cops were tougher. Not like I quoted on King's County deputies, I just knew that and was hard to keep the balance between the respect and the lazy manner in which they did, at least, half of their job.

"And good at working while pretending we are not," Rick smiled, starting the engine. Him I couldn't reproach of restiveness even if I wanted to. Still, I couldn't agree.

"It's not a real work. We are just riding around, making sure everyone sees us."

"Like Batman and some of those guys," 

"Are you into DC?" I asked with interest.

"Not much, but my kid is."

"I am more into Marvel," I confessed, feeling awkward. I said it to Rick, but I wasn't sure it was me. Or I got the feeling because I wasn't supposed to say it to him, such stupid stuff. My nephews liked comics much and I used to read them to her aloud.

"Marvel like what?" Rick drove gently, getting around the hydrants on the hips of the streets like a gentle lover. His wife must be a happy woman, after all, I thought suddenly. He was so unlike with Shane, it was hard to imagine them being friends, but they were.

"Marvel like Captain America and stuff," I looked at the streets, wondering how the things were going in the district I was born in. I missed the chestnut trees, the blockbuster video, and the old poodle pissing on our doormat. I knew I would never come back, but some days I missed it.

"So you like comics, huh," Rick glanced at me, and then looked back on the road back again. There was something in his voice that made me say in an avoiding manner. "I like many things. I like comics, too." 

I didn't know why I was so secretive about the life I lived before the King County. Old ladies in the local grocery considered me such a sweet girl, coiffeuse used to tell me all she knew while I was sitting in her chair. When being invited to annual Department, I brought the brownies I baked, everyone was eating them telling me they were good.

I was welcomed as though I was one of them, but I didn't feel I was. I didn't belong to the town. I wanted to go back, but I couldn't. I felt better there. I didn't want to go back to what I hardly survived. I was promised that the feeling of isolation would leave me one day. I looked forward to it, I really did.

I took a shower after the shift because I was going to drop over to the cinema for a new movie. I didn't much like to do it in the quarters, but I had no choice - I hated how my body smelled after the shifts in the summer. It melted like an ice-cream and stank like a dumpster. 

Shane told me I was just crazy about it. He told me while my pussy tasted like coca-cola I had nothing to worry about. I didn't believe him, though. One couldn't be too clean while on work, especially if working at the Police. 

Too many people around me in the quarters, they made me nervous, but I wanted to keep my work and pretended I didn't care. I took off my clothes and got wrapped in a towel, hoping I wouldn't run into anyone talkative. Of course, I was mistaken. 

"Hi, Monique," Diane said, blocking my way from the locker. She had a friendly manner of cornering people in the narrow passages. I couldn't move her aside without looking rude.

"Hi, Diane," I responded, smiling falsely. Even the tiled wall would see how I hate speaking to her about the man I made out with on the regular basis, but the tiles were much more comprehensive than Diane.

"I heard you and Shane are getting along pretty well?" Diane started familiarly. I knew what she meant, but I looked at her with a blank expression on my face, "Really?"

"Yeah. Shane's got a great ass. Congrats for having this stallion in your stable," Pat grinned, leaning over the locker, so I got a chance getting around her. 

It wasn't embarrassing at all, I had heard worst things. Knowing they talked about us, that wasn't embarrassing, too – it was sheerly irritating. Didn't they have better things to talk about? 

"So I must be the lucky glover," I said vaguely, turning my back on Diane in the most impolite manner.

While I was rubbing my back with the washcloth, I thought about Diane being a curious fucking bitch. Whom I was fucking, was nobody's business but mine. At least, Rick was polite enough to never even mention he knew about me and Shane. 

I was glad to get out the quarters and to have a walk to the center of the town. I put on the dress I brought along in the backpack and my brand new shoes. The movie wasn't the most important part, but I always preferred comedies to melodramas. You couldn't get too much fun, could you? 

I took one adult ticket, a bucket of an ice-cream and a milkshake. There were not too many people in the hall, mostly couples who took the last row. I took the second, the sounds of kissing and rustling away from me. 

I opened the ice-cream when the advertisement began and started to eat as slow as I could. Almond and chocolate were my favorite flavors. The movie started fine, I was eager to watch it at ease, but I didn't succeed: something clinched in my head and the memory show began. 

The sound of the void, the heat and the shockwave, blasting me on the ground. When it happened, I couldn't even move. I understood nothing, I didn't want to die. When I saw the dead bodies around me, I felt — I didn't feel afraid. I was alive. I felt alive. Happiness overflew me, I was alive, and they, my friends, they were dead, but I was alive!

That was the last time I felt happy in my life. After that, everything was gone. All the colors faded away, there was nothing lively about my life. I didn't feel happy. I felt... I felt sorrow so deep it grew into my bones. I have no wishes and no desires - nothing like I was wiped off from the world I knew.

I returned back home in the early evening. I took a car though I could walk back easily, I wasn't in a mood for walking. I wanted familiar walls around me and a pale hope I wouldn't get drunk on returning.

When I got out of the car, I stood on the lawn in front of my house, watching it from the distance. There was nobody home. That was fucking wrong. Somebody had to be there to wait for me and to ask me if I was still alive. But there was nobody to let me in because there was nobody but me and the keys in my pocket.

When I decided to cross the street, I've noticed it on the dark doormat. It was a cardboard box, closed neatly, brown and nice. A box waiting at my door. A box waiting at the door of a policewoman transferring from Atlanta to King County after the incident including local arms dealers. 

Moving slow like under the water, I squatted and outstretched my hand to the box. My heart hammered but I felt it beating lazy and wearily. One, two, three. It should have been sappers, not me. I wasn't a sapper. But I was alive, and I had the hand to open it.

I opened the box looking into it with the mixed feeling of panic and excitement, but there was no bomb inside. There were donuts, donuts and a cup of a coffee, cooling down slowly. And a note telling me I shouldn't eat all of these donuts in one evening 'cuz that would make me fat and slow deputy.

Shane was on the shift that evening. Even if he wasn't, she still was the only man I knew to leave such shameful, pathetic stupid notes I kept in the casket just in case.

Just in case, I woke up wishing I didn't, I would go upstairs, open the casket and find these notes. And read them. And make sure it was me whom that lively, lovely man with a temper of a Rottweiler seemed to care about.

 


	4. Chapter 4

I lied in the tent, my leg on the molted pillow. It was pink years ago, what was left was more alike with ice-cream vomit in front of the roller-coaster. The maple tree cast a shadow on the tent, the shadow soared over my head, protruding the acute-angled of the murky branches and carved leaves.

Rick and Shane argued, or Lori broke out with irritation and disappointment, or Daryl opposed Shane and Shane went on him... all-Shane, right? The voices were remote, I heard only sounds, not the words, but from what I heard, I knew the storm was coming.

With mostly zombies around and mostly everyone we knew was dead, being the biggest and the meanest dog in the pack seemed to be more important than survival. Or the survival depended on who would be that dog? I would bet my life on Rick, but something had broken in him these days, even Carl avoided him though normally he didn't mind sticking with his daddy.

Shane was fierce about pharmacy's failure and Rick's actions. He found something to fight for, and Rick seemed to lose it. The group held their breath and crossed their fingers. If Shane won, nobody wanted to become a stick in his eye. If Rick won, nobody wanted to look like a turncoat to him.

As for me, I didn't think common stuff like, “Oh god, it's my fault, they all gonna hate me for the pharmacy,” but I felt down. I pressed the second pillow, the green one, sickeningly smelling with death and disinfection, to my face and started to cry silently. The feeling was obscure. I felt tired and I started to cry because I didn't know what to do.

As for me, I wanted my life back, my pills back, and my therapist back. I didn't want to be eaten alive by the droolers, I didn't want to be left behind with a pistol and one bullet in the holder only. I had never believed in God, but I was ready to believe he existed - he was a sadistic maniac, a psycho. Why did he save me then? Just to make me die a more horrible death?

I could be dead now along with the other cops on my squad. I could be lying under the marble memorial stone, blue like French cheese, with a shiny brass plate on it. There could be my name on the list of the officers killed in action. What was going on, was pathetic. And Shane was even more pathetic than all of this.

What did that bitch Lori had that I didn't? Was it because she was no cop because she had never killed a man or saw men killed? Was it because she was neat and clean, and her pussy was licked by Rick so swell it was shining like goddamn water taps she rubbed up all the time?

When the twilight came, I was calming down slowly. I was still shaky a bit, but at least, I wasn't crying. I was really pathetic, but I didn't feel ashamed anymore. For all this time, I thought Shane was special. I thought me and him, we made something special, a bond to share. 

I thought so. But when Lori appeared. She was a woman who was a woman, a wife, a mother – femme feminine, men loved such things, didn't they? A woman who did woman things only and never really got hurt, bearing no resemblance to men who loved her – no scars, no pain, no memories.

A blank page to write your story on. You took a pen and you wrote, “I am a husband and a father, she is my wife and the mother of my children”, and put a dot at the end of the sentence. You put a dot, Shane. That was exactly what you always wanted: a real woman for you to be the boss, the true male, the leader.

I hated that cowardice, miserable bastard and wanted him to get shot by Rick, probably into a stomach from a shotgun: a wound every cop feared because dying from that was a blasted torture. But, before Rick would do that, I wanted to look into Shane's eyes and say something stunning and unforgettable. Not just stand before him, swallowing snivel and sobbing like a broken ex-girlfriend I actually was.

I must have fallen asleep, the wet green pillow on my elbow, my face into it. It wasn't a real dream, just an exhausted nap. I woke up quickly because somebody folded the blanket and examined the bandage on my uncle offhandedly.

“Get lost,” I said, not opening my eyes. “I hope you washed your hands at least. No offense, Daryl, I know you don't wash them.”

“Did it hurt?” it was Shane's voice. I was pretty tired of losing my breath, swallowing my heart and crying out my eyes in the last few days. So I just wiped my face on the pillow and raised my head to see why he had come.

They lit a fire outside, there was a big fuss around the camp, shadows flouncing in silence. I shove my hand under the blanket, feverishly searching for a gun, but it wasn't there: neither under the pillow, nor next to the children's book which pages I used instead of a toilet paper. 

“Calm down,” Shane commanded. He squatted at my feet, his knee pressing into the ground. “There ain't no walkers. Lie still.”

“Who are you to command me?” I snapped at him, throwing the blanket aside. “I said, calm down!” Shane yelled angrily.

“You calm down. Where is my gun?” my head was dizzy, I must had a temperature. That was bad. 

Every time I felt dizzy after I got bitten, I thought that was the end: the fever got me, so the change began. I thought my time had come every fucking time it happened, but it never got better, and every time was like the last. I was afraid. I wanted the fear to stop. I wanted to live, and I wanted to die.

“You don't need a gun,” the tent was low, so Shane got to me on his all fours. I slapped his face with especial delight, making him grumble like a maddened pitbull. “What should I shoot at your face with? Your dick?”

“At King County, I didn't know you knew such words,” Shane tried to get hold of me, but I started hitting his hands. “At King County, you would never make me talk to you like that.”

“Calm down,” Shane roared. There was a gun on his hip, his was dressed in his full field outfit – or sort of, - including boots, T-shirt, weary cop pants with an addition of a jacket that seemed to be the favorite Sunday dress for some local poacher. 

“Or what? Are you going to punch me in the teeth?” I asked impertinently. It was a sheer provocation, I wanted Shane to hit me. I wanted him to hit me to start screaming and fighting. I wanted it, and he wanted it, but he took a longer way.

“I would never hit you,” he told me between his teeth, words sounding like a threat. “Do you know that? I would never.”

“You would never forget me, too, at least, you said so.” Moths were clouding around the fire, their shadows on the side of the tent looked like spilled pepper, moving up and down the fabric.

“I heard your voice. I heard how the walkers got you. How the fuck did you survived? They must have torn your throat open,” Shane said, examining my face with his sore eyes. Even in the poorly lit tent, I saw his skin was sallow.

“The explosion should have killed me, too, alright? Maybe I was just born that way. Being killed but not dying,” I gasped, having noticed the shadow of a man, walking slowly from the trees to the barn. 

I had a strong feeling he was walking to us in a wooden, lifeless manner of a broken dummy. But the way he checked his belt before entering the barn I knew it was Rick. Shane looked at Rick, too. He tried to get up quickly, but the tent hampered him, making him sit back again. 

“Do you want to kill him?” I asked. Shane's neck was twisted with tension, his skin was sallow for a reason. The way he moved his head to the sound of my voice and looked at me with exasperation and anger meant “yes.” 

My eyes widened. Shane squatted before me, on my blanket, my bandaged leg between his knees, and he was dressed and armed for a murder. He didn't even deny it. There was no regret and no excuse, he was determined to do it because he wanted to.

“Do you think I am a monster?” Shane asked. His look was lifeless, reminding me a blank stare of the dead we left behind, ground to the butcher's meat. He got bloody blisters on his fingers, and his nose must have been broken in a while.

I cleared my throat. I didn't know what to say, but I had to say something. I shouldn't let Shane kill Rick, even if it meant killing Shane, but Shane got the gun, and I only got his strange desire to talk to me. It didn't make sense if he wasn't going to kill me later, I thought.

“You act like a monster, but you are not yet a monster. You are Rick's friend. You can't do it to him, Shane. I still can't believe how could you do it to me, but...”

“I thought you were dead. I've heard your voice on the radio. You were dead!” Shane roared, the veins on his temples pulsing. He tried to jump on his feet once again, but the tent bounced him back. “Why are you alive, piglet?”

The rawness hit me in my blind spot, the unsafe and most vulnerable zone of my emotion-proof west. The shot nearly killed Rick, and Shane just hit the spot. I was alive and interfered with him. With his planes. With his future. With his Lori. 

“I don't know,” I said in a weak voice. Every syllable faded away, vowels rustling like leaves. “I didn't ask for it. I would love to be dead.”

“Shut up!” Shane leaned over me. He smelled bad, but we all smelled bad those days, I thought distantly, regretting my deodorant, all the deodorants in the world were lost forever. “Stop shitting me, don't even think about it! You are alive. Others are not. You are lucky to be alive, you should fucking value it.”

I must have been hallucinating because of the fever. It couldn't be Shane examining my body as though some my limbs could be lost and bitten off while he was absent. He didn't take my face in his hands, watching me closely, and I didn't feel his breath smelling with beans and sore tooth.

“I just don't know what I am doing anymore,” Shane said, and I blinked sheepishly. “What am I doing, piglet? I used to do what was right. Rick is too weak to be in charge. He's too weak to keep his family together, to keep the group together. What should I do to him?”

“You are mad as nuts,” I closed my eyes. The look on Shane's face was unbearable, and I pretended I didn't see it. “You love Lori, don't you? Go and tell her how much you love her. In the end, it hasn't be me.”

“I don't know what I am doing. I just don't know it anymore,” Shane muttered under his breath. “It has gone too far. I'm killing Rick and I'm getting over it. That's what I'm doing. That's what I must do.”

“Why the fuck are you talking to me? You are pathetic. You are disgusting. I would go and fuck Rick instead. At least, he deserves it. Do you want me to go and fuck Rick, Shane?” I pressed my nose to Shane's broken nose, lilac bruises still on both sides of it. “I will go and fuck him, and tell everyone I...”

“You ain't going anywhere,” Shane grabbed my hands, and I bit his cheek. He groaned, but didn't lose his hold, so I bit him once again, this time much harder. He shook me violently, hissing into my ear, “and you ain't telling Rick.” 

“I hate you. I fucking hate you. I'll go and fuck Rick and tell him everything. I'll do it, with God I swear!”

Shane laid me down on the mattress, pressing me into the ground with his weight. His lips were juicy like peaches and I wanted to bit them off, leaving only bleeding salvaged meat, but Shane held me tight. I could barely move, his hot heavy breath om my temple. 

It darkened before my eyes when he set me free and the first thing I did was punching Shane in the teeth to the full extinct. I knew Shane used to box in his spare time, but with all my anger put into the punch, it made his head jerk.

“Go ahead,” Shane said, spitting the blood from his torn lip on the ground. His back bent, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve, leaving long stripes of cherry red. “Go ahead and hit me. Hit me, piglet. It's what you want, right?”

“My name is Monique!” I hit him, and Shane kissed me, his tongue deep into my mouth, his lips fidgeting on my skin. When I felt it I knew I wanted him to fuck me so hard it would hurt in the morning. I helped him to get rid of the jacket, but it was never enough – I needed more.

Shane lifted my shirt and sucked on my breasts like a hungry vampire. I caressed his shaved head, realizing I remember every bump of it. He mumbled something, and I asked, “What?” clot of lust between my hips already pulsing in his fingers.

“I am a monster,” I was still feeling a little fever, but I didn't know if I was turning or just getting aroused. I took the shirt off Shane, he helped me with his both hands. “I am a fucking monster.”

“Yes, you are a fucking monster,” I licked the scar on Shane's collarbone, the one I used to put ice-cream on just to make the almond and the salty caramel taste spicier. “And you are my fucking monster.”


End file.
